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PhilGoetz comments on Rationality Quotes July 2013 - Less Wrong
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This is factually false. I know the subculture of Americans who are most-passionate about going back to nature, and they do it. The unrealism in their attitude derives not from ignorance of nature, but from being able to go back to nature while under the protection of American law and mores, so that they don't have to band together in tribes for pretection, compete with other tribes for land, and do the whole tribal bickering and conformity thing.
It's all about population density. Primitive life is pretty great if you have low population density--one person per square mile is about right in much of North America. But the population always grows until you have conflict.
Spending 9 hours a day 5 days a week sitting in a cubicle staring at a monitor and typing in numbers is horrible in its own ways, which the author prefers to accomodate and ignore.
(There are no poisonous thorns in North America. And when you see two snakes in "writhing, heaving masses", they're probably mating.)
What exactly was claimed to be a fact and how do you know it's false?
Um. Really? What do you call primitive life, then? Does it include contemporary medicine, for example?
"This testifies to nothing other than the fact that those who recommend the satisfactions of living in harmony with nature have never had to do it." That "fact" is false, and sets up a straw man in the place of the views and preferences of people who know what they're talking about.
In what sense is traveling with modern equipment, vaccinated and raised in an industrial society,
all of which depends crucially on a vast technological economy and society, 'living in harmony with nature'?
They aren't living in harmony with nature because their brief highly sanitized encounters are structured and make use of countless highly unnatural products & tools, and so that is not a strawman.
Me, I'll take air conditioning, indoor plumbing, mosquito control, and antibiotics any day...
I 100% agree with this. As a kid, I used to daydream about going and living by myself in the wilderness, partly because sitting in a classroom all day was so awful. (The other aspect is that I didn't like people much when I was 10). I've compromised by finding a job where I don't have to sit down and type numbers into a computer...at least, not much. Also I like people a lot more now.
I have a sneaking suspicion that's not what the OP meant by "Nature."